of battledore and shuttlecock, of tennis, trap-ball, or any other game that calls into action the bending as well as the extending muscles, gives firmness to every organ, and the glow of health to the entire surface. "Such, and a thousand similar recreations, varied according to the fancy, should enter into the schooltraining of the day, and alternate with the grave procession and the measured dance, for there is no occasion to banish either; although many of the more intricate and venturous dances, as the Bolero, should be but occasionally and moderately indulged in; since, as has been sufficiently shewn by Mr. Shaw,' we have daily opportunities of observing, not only the good effects of well-regulated exercise, but also the actual deformity which arises from the disproportionate development that is produced by the undue exertion of particular classes of muscles.' "-vol. iv. p. 332. Among our author's interesting treatises upon different diseases, that which relates to Leprosy is one of the most elaborate and curious. He traces the history of its technology, from the Hebrew, through the Arabic and Greek languages; and is thus enabled to assign reasons for much of the vagueness and confusion which have prevailed respecting this disorder. The theologian, as well as the student of medicine, may here derive benefit from his researches. I much regret that their general result is presented too much at length to allow of its insertion in these pages. As another instructive proof, however, of the skill with which Dr. Good could reduce the labour of varied and extensive reading into comparatively a small space, I shall present his account, by a medical friend characterized as "admirable," of the Paropsis Cataracta. "PAROPSIS CATARACTA." "CATARACT.” 66 DIMNESS OR ABOLITION OF SIGHT, FROM OPACITY OF THE CRYSTALLINE LENS" “The cataract, as it is now called, was by old English writers named PEARL-EYE, or PEARL IN THE EYE, and is so denominated by Holland, the faithful translator of Pliny. Catarracta, as a Greek term, is usually derived from кarappáσow, 'to disturb, destroy, or abolish.' Karappákrηs, or kaτapákтns, however, was employed by the Greek writers to signify a gate, door, or loophole, and the bar which fastens it, and becomes the impediment to its being opened. And it is probably from this last sense that the term cataract was first applied to the disease in question, as forming a bar to the eyes; which were called the loop-holes or windows of the mind, by various philosophers. Whence, perhaps, Shakspeare in the speech of Richmond : 'To thee I do commend my wakeful soul, Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes. "The Greeks themselves, however, called this disease indifferently hypochyma, apochysis, and hypochysis. The earlier Latins, suffusio: while catarracta seems first to have been made use of by the Arabian writers, and was probably introduced into the medical nomenclature by Avicenna. Yet the more common name among the Arabians was gutta obscura, as that for amaurosis was gutta serena; the pupil, in this last species, being serene or transparent. "The Arabians, who had adopted generally the humoral pathology of Galen, conceived both these diseases to be the result of a morbid rheum or defluxion falling on a particular part of the visual orb, in the one case producing blindness with obscurity, whence the name of an obscure rheum or gutta ; and in the other without obscurity, whence the contrary name of a transparent or serene rheum or gutta. But as various other diseases, and particularly of the joints, were also supposed to flow from a like cause, and were far more common, the terms gutta and rheuma were afterwards emphatically applied, and at length altogether limited, to these last complaints: whence the terms gout and rheumatism, which have descended to the present day, as the author has already had occasion to observe under ARTHRODIA PODAGRA. For gutta the Arabian writers sometimes employed aqua; and hence, cataract and amaurosis are described by many of them under the names of aqua, or arqua, alone. For gutta obscura the modern Germans have revived the terms ONYX and CERATONYX where the lens is peculiarly hard or horny.* "The opacity producing a cataract may exist in the lens alone, the capsule alone, or in both; thus laying a foundation for the three following varieties: a Lenticularis. Lenticular Cataract. B Capsularis. Capsular or membranous y Complicata. Complicated Cataract. The opacity existing in the lens itself, and confined to it. The opacity confined to the capsule, or membrane of the lens. The opacity common to the lens and its capsule. "We are told, moreover, by Richter,* of a cataract of the humour of Morgagni, or the interstitial fluid which lies between the capsule and the lens; whence this has also been copied by Plenck, Professor Beer, and Sir William Adams, into the list of modifications; but rather as a possible than an actual case; for none of these practitioners give a single example of such a variety ever having occurred to them with certainty, though Beer suspected it in one case.† * See Langenbeck's Prufung der Keratonyxis, einer nener Methode, &c. Götting. 1811, 8vo. Vonder Ausziehung des grauen Staars. Gött. 1773. 8vo. + Lehre vonden Augenkrankheiter, band ii. sect. 56. "It is sometimes accompanied with a sac inclosing a small body of pus or ichor, and is probably the result of the inflammation that produced it. In this case it forms the cataracta capsulolenticularis cum bursa ichorem continente, of Schmidt. Beer affirms that this sac is commonly seated between the lens and posterior part of the capsule, and very rarely between the former and the anterior part.t "Professor Beer seems to have refined a little too much in his divisions and subdivisions of cataract, for he not only assigns a distinct place to the Morgagnian, and this pustular cystic, but to a cystic form without pus, to a siliquose, and a trabecular; while he further partitions the capsular into two separate forms, according as it is before or behind in the capsular chamber; thus giving us a catalogue of nine distinct forms of what he calls the true cataract; while he allots four other subdivisions to what he denominates the spurious cataract: meaning hereby some other obstacle to vision, the seat of which is without the crystalline capsule, between its anterior hemisphere and the iris, and consequently constitutes a distinct disease, embracing several modifications of paropsis Glaucosis. "Cataracts are of different colours and of different degrees of consistency, from circumstances influencing the morbid action, with which we are but little acquainted; and as little with the occasional causes of such action, though old age seems to be a common predisposing cause. They are, therefore, black, white, leaden-hued, ferruginous, green, amber; as they are also fluid or milky, soft, firm, hard, horny, and even bony, for they have been sometimes found of this last texture. They are not unfrequently the result of an hereditary taint, adhering to generation after generation, and appearing either congenitally or by a very general predisposition afterwards. * Ueber Nachstaar und Iritis, &c. Wien 1801. + Lehre von der Augenkrankheiter, band ii. p. 301. 1813. Wenzel, Traité de la Cataracte avec des Observations. Paris, 1786. Guthrie's Lectures, &c. on the Eye, p. 208. S "From the colour of the cataract, no conclusion, in the opinion of that acute observer Mr. Pott, can be drawn in regard to its consistence; but he thinks that when the opake crystalline is perfectly dissolved so as to form a soft cataract, it is somewhat enlarged; and that when such dissolution does not take place, and a hard cataract is produced, the crystalline is in some degree lessened. The hard cataract has also been distinguished by the name of ripe, as the soft by that of unripe. But if we would think and speak of this matter,' observes Mr. Pott, 'as it really is, we should say that a dissolution or softening of the crystalline lens is by much the most common effect, and that seven times out of nine, when it becomes opake, and tends to form a cataract, it is more or less softened: the softening sometimes extending through the whole range of the lens, and sometimes through only a part of it; while, however, the part that remains undissolved is rarely, if ever, so firm as the centre of the sound crystalline.' Mr. Pott proposes it as a question, whether cataracts, which have been found perfectly soft, have not in general grown opake by slow degrees; and whether those which have been discovered to be firm have not become opake hastily, and been preceded by, or accompanied with, severe and deepseated pain in the head, particularly in the back part of it ?* He "There is no opthalmologist, however, who has paid so much attention to this subject as Professor Beer; and though his divisions are perhaps a little too minute, yet the microscopical accuracy with which he has followed up all the modifications of the cataract are entitled to our most serious attention. agrees with Mr. Pott that a hard cataract is always comparatively small, though he adds that every small cataract is not necessarily hard. He is peculiarly minute in examining all the qualities which the disease may exhibit of position, colour, shadow, shape, range; together with the mobility and degree of prominence of the iris; and till all these characters have been accurately weighed, * Chirurgical Observations relative to the Cataract, &c. 8vo. 1775. London. |